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Itamar Ben Gvir just banned the Palestinian flag

The new Israeli Minister of National Security banned the display of the colors of the Palestinian flag in public spaces. It is the latest Israeli attempt to erase Palestinian identity.

On Monday, January 9, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, banned the display of the Palestinian flag in all public spaces. 

This order is one in a recent string of escalating attacks on Palestinians by the newly formed ultra-rightwing Israeli government. 

The Israeli minister wrote on his personal Twitter account that he “directed the Israel Police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the State of Israel. We will fight terrorism and the encouragement of terrorism with all our might!”

For Palestinians, this is only the latest step in Israel’s execution of its Jewish nation-state law, which creates a legal framework for cementing Jewish supremacism in Palestine. 

A policy of erasure

In June of last year, the Knesset successfully passed a new bill that would ban the Palestinian flag in Israeli-funded institutions. The rightwing Israeli MK, Eli Cohen, justified the move by labeling the Palestinian flag as an “enemy flag.” 

Although the banning of the Palestinian flag is not a recent endeavor, the ushering of an entire police force to intervene against an act involving the display of a piece of cloth is unprecedented. 

Ben Gvir’s latest move is a severe escalation in the use of Israeli impunity to erase Palestinian visibility, especially following the Unity Uprising of 2021, which witnessed the collective mobilization of Palestinians across geographical and socio-cultural barriers imposed by Israeli apartheid practices. 

“It’s a form of trying to negate Palestinian life, they’re suffocating us.”

Dr. Linda Tabar

In March 2022, Israeli authorities officially launched Operation Break the Wave, which included the allocation of 180 million NIS ($52,256,340) to the Israeli Police2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and featured the most extensive armed and unarmed resistance against Israeli colonialism since the Second Intifada.

The recent criminalization of the colors of the Palestinian flag is a continuation of this recent Israeli onslaught. And it is a form of erasure against the Palestinian people. 

“It’s erasure and a form of criminalizing every act of Palestinian resistance and identity,” Linda Tabar, a Palestinian professor of international relations at the University of Sussex told Mondoweiss. 

From Nazareth, Tabar reflected on the recent escalation in light of what it means for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship within the Israeli state. “It’s a form of trying to negate Palestinian life,” Tabar said, “they’re suffocating us.”

A settler state

“There is a fascist state in power,” Jerusalem-based activist Jalal Abu Khater told Mondoweiss, reflecting on the recent act of blatant assault on Palestinians by the new Israeli government “And it is symbolized with Ben-Gvir’s coming in as minister.” 

Itamar Ben-Gvir, 46, has risen into power in the past two years after intensified attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, back in May of 2021, during the police and settler assault on Palestinians dubbed Operation Guardian of Walls. 

Prior to that, he was not a significant figure within the settler movement but rather was a familiar face within the Israeli criminal system. When the current Minister was 18, the Israeli military refused his draft, considering him too dangerous.

What was telling in Ben-Gvir’s statements is also highlighted in the reference to the Palestinian flag as a “PLO flag,” which associates the Palestinian national banner with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 and currently chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, the de facto president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime, and one of the original co-founders of the Fatah political party. 

The PLO is also the institutional partner in the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993-1994 by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Ben-Gvir had stolen the Cadillac emblem off of Rabin’s car weeks before the Prime Minister was assassinated while at a rally supporting the Oslo Accords.

“Calling it a PLO flag is also an attempt to destroy anything Oslo. In the first Intifada, you weren’t allowed to carry a flag,” Professor Tabar told Mondoweiss. In this sense, Ben-Gvir foreshadows an Israeli state governed by settler rule.

“The law is such a coercive instrument in their hands that they use to legalize repression and violence, and settler colonial repression,” Tabar explained to Mondoweiss. “The law is only a tool to help them in that process.”

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These are strong signs that this apartheid nation, that the Biden administration keeps insisting is working towards peace (hard to see any signs right now), and still needs US tax payer funding, and US weapons, has taken a turn for the worse, and this is going to be the end of ANY hopes for the Palestinians. This terrorist leader of Israel, has hardly any time to warm his seat, and he has within a few days been able to provoke, taunt, and upset the entire Arab world, and the International community. He has been acting like an arrogant, racist scoundrel, and we should be ashamed we have embraced him, and Israel’s ultra right, racist government. An apartheid nation that we aid, arm, and protect.

Who in the Biden administration or Congress is surprised about this outrage?

All this because of Bibi’s desperation to regain power, and make the investigations into his corruption charges go away.

So what will Antony Blinken say? Will he say he is “concerned” or will he say the “US is watching the situation closely” as usual, and hope we will all forget about it – just like the US has forgotten about the brutal killing of Shireen Abu Akleh? When it comes to our dear ally in the ME, the US government is banking on an obedient media, and our short attention span.
This is the monster America helped to make.

Richard Silverstein (https://www.richardsilverstein.com) recently referred Itamar Ben-Gvir as Israel’s Ernst Röhm. Sadly, I think the comparison is dead on.
If the jackboot fits . . .

Having the flag illegal in the First Intifada contributed to fighting back by throwing rocks.

Making the flag illegal again signals “NO, to two states”, Burying Biden and Blinkin’s policy for the objective.

The more unacceptable Israel becomes, the greater the opportunity for Palestinians to call an end run play.

Is freedom of religion only for non-Jews? If a Christian goes to church or a Muslim goes to the mosque, there’s no condemnation. But if a Jew prays at Judaism’s holiest place, he is condemned. If you believe in democracy & freedom of religion, then you should demand that everyone including Jews should have freedom of religion.